BY ELIZABETH BASTOS
Dun
Thin-Lipped Aunt
Shriveled
Mallard Duck Ass Gray
Bone
Antler
Sere Field of Stones, Most of Them (After Dully Consulting The Guidebook) Feldspar
Oily Handmade Lace Doily
Frail Irish Grandmother Gray
Mud-Flecked Boots In The Coat Closet Brown
Lost Mitten
Anemic Cheek
Is That Shrouded Distant Orb Really Our Beloved Sun Yellow
For more Elizabeth Bastos, go to Goody Bastos.
BY KATHRYN HIGGINS
When the surreal hits the mundane it's usually time to get up and pee. If only you could wake up.
1. Math Test: You are sitting in a classroom taking a test. It's really hard, you think. Lots of time has gone by and you haven't looked at a single problem. Everyone else is finishing up and turning in calculation-crammed bluebooks. Then you realize you neglected to take the test. In your dream, which should be over by now, you arrange with the teacher to stay after and finish. You discard all the paperwork you had been assembling -- random shit that has nothing to do with this test -- and start anew. Your brain is finally confronted with something you can't even define: an actual math problem. Mickey Mouse and analogies ignite in your head and you finally wake up.
2. Getting Married to Your Ex-Boyfriend That You Didn't Like: You should be so excited; it's a dream come true -- but you are meh. You endure bridal showers and a wedding and even put in some grueling hours in actual everyday marriage. Finally you wake up. Whew.
3. Balancing Your Checkbook/Paying Bills: Probably the most exciting dream. The pulse races and you wake up sweaty.
4. Cleaning the Apartment: You forgot that dusty place there; no, get in there further with your Swifter. WTF? It's still dusty? Try again. And don't forget you still have to vacuum the whole place.
5. Thank You Note: You are having a really hard time establishing the right combo of sincerity and creativity. It's such a cliché. You write and write but still haven't finished this thank you note. What were you thanking them for?
6. Friends' Heads on Sticks: You don't mind the occasional Rambo dream. Even a sci-fi nightmare is welcome. But when the unconscious mixes your book club up with vengeful slaughter, it's sorta uncomfortable.
7. Going to the Toilet in the Middle of Walmart: You have to pee but you're in Walmart. Thankfully, there is a toilet right there in the middle of that aisle. You drop your pants but no relief. Something is amiss. Why don't you ever have that horrifying going-to-the-toilet-in-front-of-everyone dream in Bergdorf's?
8. Nothing on TV: You've got the remote and you're changing channels, changing channels, but all you see are commercials for chicken nuggets and car insurance and America's Next Top Model.
9. Sex with the Ex: Ewwww, you thought, somehow, you'd never have to endure this again. It's humiliating and boring. Why are you doing this?
10. Someone Important Is Missing: You're living your life and doing stuff, but there's a vacant hole in your chest. Something's wrong but you can't figure it out -- there's just this overwhelming feeling of bereftness. You wake up. Your children (lover/wife/husband) didn't exist in your dream world.
Kathryn's book Snide Remarks in Sotto Voce, is available on most ebook outlets.
BY MEG POKRASS AND DAN BURT
Bringing Back Bobby: project to pay the ransom for my kidnapped son, Bobby.
Friend the Cat!: help my 2,000 Facebook friends get the medication they need to leave their computers to buy cat food!
Up, Down, and All Around in the Land of the Poles: riding every major roller coaster in Poland.
Special Needs NYC Bank Robbery: help disabled adults rob a bank in NYC. Log in to the secure server at attica dot com for a list of peanut-free targets.
Tempeh Lover's Intimate Secrets: vegan-on-vegan adult XXX game.
Pork Poems: a pop-out book of poems about pork with special emphasis on sausage.
Coffee Ground Me: grinding the coffee you want to be buried in (freeze dried available, also).
Cook & Ink It: a book of recipe tattoos.
Turkey Dressing!: creating a line of costume jewelry for anxious turkeys including ornamental blindfolds and cigarettes.
Tying the Knot: a project to help a young, adventurous couple explore the depths of their love and depravity by learning basic S&M techniques (e.g. sailors knots and safe words) in their dungeon/future nursery.
Notes from a Light Well: generations of pigeons are reunited and cooked in a festive celebration.
Endorphin Dolphin: teach the language of dolphin to the clinically depressed.
Raisins in the Sun: a calendar of grandpas in Speedos.
BY MOLLY SCHOEMANN
J. Alfred Prufrock of Love
The Real Housewives of West Egg
Keeping up With the Karenins
Fitzwilliam Darcy is 28…and Single
Doctor Moreau's Extreme Makeover: Animal Edition
Molly Schoemann grew up in New York City and then moved to Boston by way of Honolulu. She currently resides in Garner, North Carolina. Molly began writing humor and satire during her freshman year at Bard College. She waited until Snuggies were being priced to move at $5 apiece before buying one, because she has her pride. She can be reached at: molly.schoemann@gmail.com.
BY MARISA CARROLL
1. Design on a Dime, "Hillside Villa Retreat in a Basement"
I had high hopes for this episode, but even with the designers incorporating natural elements inspired by Laura's home in Tuscany, I thought rubbing a vibrating egg on my junk would be more exciting. The family seemed very pleased at the reveal.
2. Barefoot Contessa, "Perfect French Dinner Party"
A perfectly cooked lamb in just four hours plus prep time? Bon appetit! Watched this episode with speakerphone on so my dad could tell me all about a major car accident in which my sister was involved.
3. House Hunters International, "Second Home in Spain"
Aired immediately after Design on a Dime. Did not catch the couple's background at first (see 1.), but luckily the rich voice of Suzanne Whang informed me, after every commercial break, that Jill and Jeremy Fenby-Taylor wanted a remote mountain view, while the kids wanted to be at least close enough to town to get internet access. D'oh! Teenagers! I wanted them to pick house #2; am unsure of which house they actually chose.
4. HSN, "Queen Latifah’s Exclusive Queen Collection" (Hosted By Queen Latifah)
Nobody can get between me and my Queen. Not even my best friend on her wedding day.
5. YouTube, "City & Makeup, Vegetarian Lasagna"
Girl, you put a lot of vegetables in that lasagna! I don't even like lasagna, but I might check that video out sometime other than when my boyfriend was breaking up with me over Skype (tabbed browsing!!!!).
Marisa Carroll won a poetry contest in third grade; now she writes jokes on the Internet. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Splitsider, and, of course, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/mar_isa.
BY DAN INDANTE
Every once in a while, even a mad dad needs to get in touch with his feminine side and have a good cry. (And no, this has nothing to do with the fact that I attended BlogHer 2011 -- a conference for women and men bloggers with apparently ambiguous tastes.) Anyway, here are the 10 top movies to help those tear ducts start flowing:
10. Jerry Maguire
We all need to try and forget every movie Cuba Gooding, Jr. made after this seminal dude flick. Honestly, if we had any clue that he was going to follow up this classic with Snow Dogs, The Radio, or Daddy Day Camp, they would not have had us at "Hello," "Good bye," or "It'll be $12 for that ticket." Still, we can't deny this movie's greatness even if Tom Cruise, the Grand Puba of Scientology and the most amazing set of teeth ever to be diagnosed as clinically insane, was the other star. When Cuba's Rod Tidwell finally got his contract, and, yes, they SHOWED HIM THE MONEY!, we laughed, we cried, and we hugged whoever was sitting in the next seat, whether or not we knew them.
(As a postscript, when watching Jerry Maguire today, I can also occasionally feel a tear rolling down my cheek as I remember Renee Zellwegger as a cute, fresh, pretty newcomer to the Hollywood scene rather than the anorexic, greasy, facially misshaped, plastic surgery-addicted freak she is now.)
9. Rocky, Rocky II, and Rocky Balboa
The Rocky series is not generally known as tearjerking. However, these three each had their moments. When Rocky loses at the end of the first movie and still proclaims his love for Adrian, you can't help but tear up for everybody's favorite kneecapper-turned-underdog-turned-Oscar winner.
In Rocky II, when Adrian wakes up from her coma and tells Rocky to "just win," I jumped out of my seat, sprinted around the theater, and made out with the usher. I mean, this girl had gotten her ass kicked by Carlo in The Godfather and here she was sacking up and showing her man the way to the heavyweight championship of the motherfucking world. I'm getting misty just thinking about it now.
In Rocky Balboa, after decades of worshiping the Italian Stallion, Apollo, Paulie, and all-other-things Rocky, we cried when we finally realized (despite hoping against hope that he'd stop after Rocky III and Rocky IV and Rocky V) that Sylvester Stallone was just as narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, and delirious as every other Hollywood piece of shit who runs their franchise into the garbage heap of history. How sad when true talent gets obliterated by old age and decades of steroid use.
8. Leaving Las Vegas
Nicolas Cage, the alky who drinks enough booze during this movie to kill a farm animal, finally gets a chance to have sex with the smoking-hot hooker who was the original Karate Kid's girlfriend: Elisabeth Shue. And while he's inside her? He dies. Nuff said.
7. Airplane!
C'mon, they can't all be sad. Airplane! stands alone as the single funniest movie of all time. Before Airplane!, comedy flat-out didn't exist, unless you count the campfire farting scene from Blazing Saddles. I can name 20 scenes from Airplane! off the top of my head that left me gasping for breath and my underwear sopping wet with urine. I laughed until I cried and, at 12 years old, I only understood about a third of the jokes. But seriously, the old chick talking jive to the two brothers? If you didn't end up shedding a few at the movie, you certainly did months later when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences committed the greatest injustice in the history of movies by denying Leslie Nielsen an Oscar. I'm still pissed.
6. It's A Wonderful Life
Can you believe there was a time before reality television? Well, yes, it existed. And before cameras entered our real lives, television never made anybody cry. Really, what's sad about The Brady Bunch or Cagney & Lacey? Being the enlightened renaissance man that I am, I've always enjoyed a good cry, but in the past I'd wait for It's A Wonderful Life before I'd start sputtering and weeping like a 3-year-old. Today, I still cry when I see the movie, but only because somebody once stole a shitload of money from me and, because I had no friends, I had to pay it back out of my own pocket. Feels a little different than the old days, I must say.
5. The Crying Game
There are a lot of reasons to cry in a movie. Before The Crying Game came out, though, I didn't think one of them could be because the blazing hot chick, with the sexually casual attitude to match, turns out to have a bigger dick than you.
4. The Champ
Look, we all hate Rick Schroder. He was the cutest child actor since Shirley Temple. He continued getting movie and television roles even after he became an ugly, albeit blond, blue-eyed adult. And instead of letting his parents piss his money away, the guy's made $50 million in real estate. Trust me, I hate him more than you do because, when I was a kid, I had to go to clubs in Los Angeles and watch him and Todd Bridges hook up with every hot teenage girl in Southern California. Nevertheless, he made The Champ before he became the most adored pre-pubescent since Donny Friggin' Osmond. So, when you're bawling your eyes out as Angelina Jolie's dad dies at the end, you don't have to kick yourself, even if I still do.
3. Mr. Holland's Opus
It's bad enough when you realize that, as we reach 50 and 60 and older, we're going to be fat, ugly, wrinkled, and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our lives have been wasted, useless, and entirely unappreciated by everybody we've ever known. We are further aware that our greatest dreams are going to be dashed like a Bangladeshi ferry on the rocks during a cyclone. Finally, as dads, we intuitively understand that our kids will never fulfill our expectations and, very likely, will be unable to do so because of something that we fucked up. But to have to watch it all happen on a screen in less than 120 minutes is too much for any human being to endure.
2. Rudy
There are a lot of sad movies and a lot of sad scenes. But, generally speaking, a movie has a sad part, and then 20 minutes where you can recover, then another sad part, then 20 minutes, and so on. Rudy is like a goddamn conveyor belt of devastation. Every time you think you can stop crying and let your spleen rest for a minute, you get smacked in the mouth with some new horrendous indignity for Rudy Ruettiger. Too small to play HS football? Smack. Too dumb to get into college? Wham. Best friend dies? Smash. Too broke to rent a room? Crush. Doesn't get into Notre Dame? Pow. Doesn't get into Notre Dame? Pow. Doesn't get into Notre Dame? Pow. And on and on and on and on and on. Enough! Enough! Enough! Jesus Christ (no offense, Catholics) but how much snot can I blow out of my head before it collapses in on itself?
AND THE NO. 1 MALE TEARJERKER MOVIE OF ALL TIME?
1. Brian's Song
If all the other sad movies are the foothills, Brian's Song is Mt. Fucking Everest. I heard half the production crew killed themselves after watching the dailies. I could show this movie in a cemetery and 500 male corpses would start crying. The amazing part about Brian's Song is that it wasn't even based on a book; it was based on a chapter of a book written by Gale Sayers. Are you kidding me? What's the rest of the book about, Gale? Tortured children in a leper colony who find themselves in the path of an asteroid that's going to destroy the world? When I finished watching Brian's Song for the 80th time, I had spent my life savings on Kleenex and still sat in a pool of my own tears. I wish somebody had told me that James Caan was going to spend the next 40 years sleeping with every Playboy playmate who ever lived. At least then I would have known that there was some hope left in the world.
Dan Indante -- aka The Mad Dad -- is a bitter, vindictive attorney who is 10 years removed from writing the seminal relationship book: The Complete A**hole's Guide To Handling Chicks -- quite possibly the most offensive work in the history of American literature. Now, with two kids and a wife, 43-year-old, fat, balding, unrepentant Dan pretends to be a model parent during PTA meetings and Little League games while secretly writing MadDadzBlog.com, a website that rages against the banality of modern parenting. Dan lives and works in Beverly Hills until the creditors from his various real estate projects catch up to him.
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